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American Sniper

by Chris Kyle

“People try to put me in a category as a bad-ass, a good ol’ boy, asshole, sniper, SEAL, and probably other categories not appropriate for print. All might be true on any given day. In the end, my story, in Iraq and afterward, is about more than just killing people or even fighting for my country. It’s about being a man. And it’s about love as well as hate.”

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Rating is : 6

Chris Kyle's

American Sniper

“People try to put me in a category as a bad-ass, a good ol’ boy, asshole, sniper, SEAL, and probably other categories not appropriate for print. All might be true on any given day. In the end, my story, in Iraq and afterward, is about more than just killing people or even fighting for my country. It’s about being a man. And it’s about love as well as hate.”

“To top things off, the Iraqis had send some Scuds over just before the war started. Most had been taken care of by Patriot missiles, but one got through. Wouldn’t you know it took out the Starbucks where we’d hung out during our prewar training? That’s low, hitting a coffee place. It could have been worse, I guess. It could have been a Dunkin’ Donuts. The joke was that President Bush only declared war when the Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.”

“I started rummaging through the complex to see if I could find any cool shit – money, guns, explosives. The only thing I found worth acquisitioning was a handheld Tiger Woods golf game. Not that I was authorized to take it, or even did take it, officially. If I had taken it, I would have played it the rest of the deployment. If I’d done that, it might explain why I am actually pretty good at the game now. If I had taken it.”

One Million Page Princess

December 30th 2014

I’m very hesitant to write a full review for American Sniper… for several reasons. However many of those reasons might spoil the movie, or even this book for anyone wanting to see or read it. It’s hard not to. So I won’t say much.

This is the autobiography of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL known as the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history. He had over 160 confirmed kills during his four deployments, and was nicknamed “The Legend” by his comrades. I really enjoy war history, and to be honest I find SEALs and their training to be fascinating, and have read many books and watched many documentaries on the subject. I saw an advance screening of American Sniper starring Bradley Cooper a few weeks ago, and really liked it. And I usually don’t like Clint Eastwood movies.

If you’re interested in war, weapons, training, and stories of daily operations within the military, then this book is probably right up your ally. I usually am myself, but there were just one too many stories about SEAL bar fights or boastful kill records that it put me over the edge into feeling kind of gross reading about it. These are all left out in the film, fortunately. I did however really like the short excerpts that were written by Kyle’s wife, Taya, as her words provided a neat juxtaposition of how her husband and her felt about the exact same incident.

I don’t even know if I would call it a book per se, as that implies it’s a well written piece of literature; it’s more of a story, as I don’t think Chris Kyle was much of a writer, even with the help of two additional ghost writers. That’s fine though, as I don’t know many exceptional writers who would be capable of being the greatest sniper in history.

This is that this is one of the rare cases where I liked the movie more.

About

I love to read. I always have. When I was a toddler I was most at peace walking up and down the aisles of book stores or libraries, and would throw tantrums that involved violent kicking and painful sobs when my parents dragged me out. That was before I even knew the alphabet.